A Timber Building Dressed as Concrete
Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan (上下町商工会館, also written Jōge-chō Shokō Kaikan), the former Jōge Police Station building in Jōge, Fuchū City, Hiroshima Prefecture, was completed in 1930 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on 25 July 2011.
Walk about 200 metres north-east from Jōge Station and the road runs into a street of white-plastered merchant houses under black tiles. Then this thing appears. A symmetrical two-storey front, a porch pushed forward at the centre, and above the porch a squared tower carried up past the eaves. Tall narrow windows march across the wall in pairs and in threes. Visitors have compared the effect to a small chapel, which was certainly not the intention.
The building measures 13 metres across the front and 7.4 metres deep, carries a hipped roof clad in sheet metal, and covers 101 square metres. It is built entirely of wood.
That is the whole trick, and it is worth pausing on. By 1930, reinforced concrete had become the visual language of official authority in Japan: banks, city halls, prefectural police headquarters. A small town in the Bingo hills could not pay for concrete. So the carpenters built a police station in timber and then made it look like something else, using flush boarding, a heavy cornice line and window openings proportioned the way concrete openings are proportioned. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record puts it plainly: the exterior form of reinforced concrete construction, expressed in wood.
Why It Was Registered
Registration in 2011 came under the criterion covering structures that contribute to the historic character of the national landscape. Jōge already had a protected-looking streetscape of Edo and Meiji commercial buildings, and the obvious question is why a 1930 police station belongs in that company.
The answer is that it records a moment the older buildings cannot. Jōge had been a tenryō, a district administered directly by the Tokugawa shogunate, and it grew rich on the Sekishū Kaidō road as a post town and a centre for money-lending. The white-walled houses come from that era. The police station comes from the era that replaced it, when the modern prefectural state extended its offices into every provincial town and needed buildings that looked the part.
Buildings of this kind were once common and are now scarce. Small-town police stations were functional property; when a new station was needed, the old one usually came down. Comparable survivors have been registered in Kanazawa, Onomichi, Wakayama and elsewhere, and the group is small enough that each one carries weight.
The station's own working life was short. Police reorganisation in Hiroshima Prefecture during the mid-1950s closed a number of small stations, and Jōge is understood to have been reduced to a substation before the police vacated the site altogether in the late 1960s. The Jōge Chamber of Commerce and Industry acquired the land and buildings soon afterwards. In 1982 the chamber built a new hall alongside; the detention block and the martial arts hall that had stood in the compound were demolished at that time, and the main office block was repaired rather than cleared. Local accounts hold that demolition was proposed and rejected. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record dates the surviving fabric to 1930 with mid-Shōwa work and a 1982 renovation.
What to Look at When You Get There
Start opposite the front, far enough back to take in the whole elevation at once.
The tower over the entrance porch is the element that does most of the work. It has no function. There is no clock in it and no bell. It exists to give the building a vertical accent at the centre, which is how a concrete civic building of the period would have been massed, and it announces from a distance which door is the official one.
Next, the windows. Two-light and three-light groupings alternate across the wall, set out symmetrically about the porch. Tall proportions like these suit concrete, where a wall can be pierced freely; in timber-frame construction they force the carpenter to work around post spacing. Look at how the groupings are spaced relative to the tower and you can read the compromise being made.
Then the roof. A hipped roof in sheet metal, low and quiet, sitting on a building whose walls are pretending to be masonry. The junction is where the disguise stops. Older photographs and the current roof both show sheet metal, which is light enough for a timber frame carrying this much wall detail.
The building is in daily use as the offices of the local chamber of commerce, and the exterior can be seen at any time from the public street. Interior viewing requires arrangement in advance through the chamber or the Fuchū City cultural properties section, so this is not a place to walk into unannounced. Photographing the outside is unrestricted.
Give it thirty minutes and combine it with the rest of the town. The white-walled main street is a short walk south-west, the Jōge Christian Church with its distinctive tower stands nearby, and Okinaza, the 1920s wooden theatre, is roughly 800 metres north-east of the station in the other direction. Jōge is small enough to cover on foot in an afternoon.
- 📍 Plan Your Visit to Hiroshima
- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Joge Town Chamber of Commerce and Industry (former Joge Police Station)
- [ Itsukushima Shrine & Hiroshima Peace Memorial ]
Q&A
- Can visitors go inside Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan (the former Jōge Police Station)?
- The exterior can be viewed at any time from the street. The interior is a working office of the Jōge Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Fuchū City states that interior viewing requires prior contact. Enquiries go through the Fuchū City Board of Education cultural properties section.
- How do I reach Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan from the nearest station?
- It stands about 200 metres north-east of Jōge Station on the JR Fukuen Line, roughly a three-minute walk. By car it is about 15 minutes from the Sera interchange on the Onomichi Expressway. There is no dedicated visitor parking, so use the town's public car parks.
- Why does Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan look like a concrete building when it is made of wood?
- Reinforced concrete signalled official authority in 1930s Japan, but it was beyond the budget of a rural town. The carpenters reproduced the appearance of a concrete government office in timber, using boarded walls, a strong cornice and tall grouped windows. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it in exactly these terms.
- Is photography permitted at Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan?
- The exterior may be photographed freely from the public road. Morning light falls on the entrance front, which is the better time for the tower and the window rhythm. For interior photography, ask when arranging a visit.
- What else in Jōge can be visited on the same trip as Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan?
- The white-walled Sekishū Kaidō streetscape runs through the centre of town. Okinaza, a wooden theatre of 1925 that is also a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, lies about 800 metres north-east of the station. The Jōge History and Culture Museum, housed in a former bank, sits on the main street. All are within walking distance.
Basic Information
| Name | Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan (former Jōge Police Station Building) / 上下町商工会館（旧上下警察署庁舎） |
|---|---|
| Location | 883-1 Shimooki, Jōge, Jōge-chō, Fuchū City, Hiroshima Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration number 34-0115 |
| Year Designated | 25 July 2011 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | 13 m frontage, 7.4 m depth; two storeys in timber, hipped roof in sheet metal; floor area 101 m² |
| Owner | Jōge Chamber of Commerce and Industry |
| Public Access | Exterior viewable at any time; interior viewing by prior arrangement |
References
- National Designated Cultural Properties Database, Agency for Cultural Affairs — Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan (former Jōge Police Station Building)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00008774
- Cultural Heritage Online — Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan (former Jōge Police Station Building)
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/195115
- Fuchū City, Hiroshima Prefecture — Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan (Registered Cultural Property)
- https://www.city.fuchu.hiroshima.jp/soshiki/kyoiku_iinkai/kyoikuseisakuka/bingokokufu/shinobunkazai/kunitouroku_bunkazai/930.html
- Fuchū City Library, Local History Archive — Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Fuchū City
- https://adeac.jp/fuchu-hiroshima-lib/texthtml/d100040/mp000040-100040/ht000420
- Jōge Tenryō Tourism — Jōge-chō Shōkō Kaikan (former Jōge Police Station Building)
- https://jogetenryo.com/meguru/sight/building/439/
Last verified: 2026.08.08